The Hunters in the Snow

In The Hunters in the Snow, Douglas Houston discovers moments of unusual and unlikely comedy. This is an intensely thrilling and idiosyn-cratic follow-up to his powerful debut, With the Offal Eaters, but the phantasmagorical broodings of his first collection have become wild flights of fancy and amazing speculations ('W.B. Yeats in LSD Horror'). This new book follows the shadowy paths of emotion and landscape, whether in the guise of the hungover ne'er-do-well Shackleton, the bibliophile hero of one of the book's sections, or else in the boldly contemporary On the Hill, a sequence set in the world of rock-climbing. The Hunters in the Snow is about the demands and pleasures of wilderness and home. It leads a double life following these threads. Whilst it is subtle and humorously wry, it is also a nervy thriller - a daring, stylish adventure featuring star characters and grim scenarios.